CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneobjective-ciosxmlparsing
Adam Waite
Adam Waite

Reputation: 18855

Parsing XML Inner XML tags Objective-C

I would like to create an NSDictionary or (NSArray) full of NSDictionary objects for each station in the following XML:

<stations lastUpdate="1328986911319" version="2.0">
    <station>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>River Street , Clerkenwell</name>
        <terminalName>001023</terminalName>
        <lat>51.52916347</lat>
        <long>-0.109970527</long>
        <installed>true</installed>
        <locked>false</locked>
        <installDate>1278947280000</installDate>
        <removalDate/>
        <temporary>false</temporary>
        <nbBikes>12</nbBikes>
        <nbEmptyDocks>7</nbEmptyDocks>
        <nbDocks>19</nbDocks>
    </station>

    ... more...

    <station>
        <id>260</id>
        <name>Broadwick Street, Soho</name>
        <terminalName>003489</terminalName>
        <lat>51.5136846</lat>
        <long>-0.135580879</long>
        <installed>true</installed>
        <locked>false</locked>
        <installDate>1279711020000</installDate>
        <removalDate/>
        <temporary>false</temporary>
        <nbBikes>12</nbBikes>
        <nbEmptyDocks>4</nbEmptyDocks>
        <nbDocks>18</nbDocks>
    </station>

    ...

 </stations>

What's the best way to achieve this? Right now I have an NSDictionary with one object and one key - "stations", but I want the NSDictionary (or NSArray) of NSDictionarys.

I'm using an XML parser by Troy Brant - http://troybrant.net/blog/2010/09/simple-xml-to-nsdictionary-converter/

I'm guessing it's going to involve some looping of some sort but I'm not really sure how to approach this problem. Any help or pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 891

Answers (2)

otakuProgrammer
otakuProgrammer

Reputation: 298

I also use the XMLReader it is very easy to understand
I have looked at your xml, and I am assuming you wanted to use the array of station tags.
Here is my solution: 

NSDictionary *dictXML= [XMLReader dictionaryForXMLString:testXMLString error:&parseError];
NSArray *arrStation = [[dictXML objectForKey:@"stations"] objectForKey:@"station"];//this would return the array of station dictionaries

Now that you have the array of station tags you can do what you want for example displaying all id:

for(int i=0;i<[arrStation count];i++){
   NSDictionary *aStation = [arrStation objectAtIndex:i];
   NSLog(@"id = %@",[aStation objectForKey:@"id"]);
}

also you can write less code using the fast enumeration loop:

for(NSDictionary *aStation in arrStation){
  NSLog(@"id = %@",[aStation objectForKey:@"id"]);
}

hope that helps :)

Upvotes: 1

Oscar Gomez
Oscar Gomez

Reputation: 18488

The best way would be to create subclasses of NSObject that map to each tag. That would be way more cleaner than using Dictionaries and Arrays.

Upvotes: 0

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